WIN, Coben, Harlan [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

then back to the neck. I put my fingers together, forming two spears, and shove those spears deep into that hollow beneath both ears. When I jerk up hard on his skull, his head jerks and his eyes roll back.

Of course, I could be wrong. We have established that already. Ian Cornwell may have been telling the truth from the get-go—that he didn’t know anything, that he is innocent, that he was indeed tied up by two masked men. If that is the case, we will soon know for certain. And yes, I will feel bad for what I’ve done to him. Violence is a high, but I am not a sadist. That may sound like I’m threading an awfully thin needle, but I do experience empathy, and if I hurt an innocent man, I will feel bad about it. But life is a series of close calls, of weighing pros and cons, and if both Ema and I (not to mention the original FBI investigators) believe that Ian Cornwell has not been truthful, the pros of crossing this particular line win out.

And so I continue my assault, methodically, expressionless, until he cracks and tells me everything.

*  *  *

Well, that was interesting.

Here is what Professor Ian Cornwell told me:

Three months before the Vermeer and Picasso theft, young Ian Cornwell, a Haverford research assistant one year removed from graduating, met a lovely lass named Belinda Evans at a local pizzeria. Belinda was, according to Ian Cornwell, a “knockout” with long blonde hair and sun-kissed skin. He fell hard.

At first, Belinda claimed to be a junior attending Villanova University, but as their relationship progressed, she admitted to her new beau that she still attended nearby Radnor High School as a sophomore. Her parents, she said, were very strict, so they would have to keep their relationship a secret. Ian Cornwell concurred. He did not want his relationship with a high school girl, a sophomore at that, to be made public, thereby harming his chances for academic and career advancement.

This, of course, presented a problem for a budding romance—simply put, where to hook up. Her home with the strict parents was a no-no, as was Ian’s campus suite, which he shared with three other research assistants who would definitely gossip.

Belinda suggested a solution.

Ian worked nights alone as a security guard in Founders Hall. The work was, to put it mildly, uneventful. Haverford was a sleepy campus. Ian spent most nights alone at the security desk, reading and studying. What if, Belinda proposed, he could sneak her into Founders Hall, where they could spend hours late at night alone?

Ian readily and excitedly agreed.

The young lovebirds met up this way, Ian estimated, approximately ten times over a three-month period. Ian fell harder and harder for Belinda. The routine was a simple one: Belinda would go to the locked back entrance. There was a primitive security camera back there. Ian would see her via the monitor at his desk. She would wave and smile. He would come back, let her in, and you can guess the rest.

But on one special night—the night of the heist obviously—when Ian unlocked that back door after seeing Belinda on the monitor, a man burst in wearing a ski mask and brandishing a handgun. At first, Ian thought the man had forced Belinda at gunpoint, but it soon became apparent that that wasn’t the case. They were working together, Belinda and this man in the ski mask. He held the gun on Ian while Belinda explained in the calmest voice, one Ian had never heard her use before, the situation—how they would tie Ian up, how Ian would tell the authorities that two men had fooled him by pretending to be policemen, how the MO would appear similar to the Gardner Museum heist in Boston so as to throw them off. Belinda did all the talking. The man in the ski mask just held the gun.

Belinda told Ian Cornwell that if he ever talked, she would tell the authorities that the heist had been Ian’s idea. Ian was, after all, the inside source. She also reminded Ian that there was not much he could offer the police anyway. He couldn’t identify the man in the ski mask, and as for Belinda herself, nothing she had told him was the truth. She did not attend Radnor High School. Her name was not Belinda. After tonight, he would never see her again. Even if he told the police the truth, the leads would be scant; Ian would only be incriminating himself, she reminded him. He had, after all, sneaked a high school girl into Founders Hall over a three-month period. At best, Ian would be expelled for that indiscretion and academically tarnished.

To further emphasize her seriousness, Belinda told Ian that if he did talk, they would come back and kill him. As she gave him that final warning, the man in the ski mask grabbed Ian by the scruff of the neck and pushed the muzzle of the gun into his eye.

The morning after the art heist, when Ian was found tied up, he debated coming clean and telling the truth. But the FBI agents were so aggressive, so sure that he was involved, Ian feared that everything Belinda told him would come to pass would. He would take the fall. Suppose, after he spilled his guts, they never found Belinda or the man in the ski mask. Would the FBI be satisfied—or would they need a convenient fall guy, a guy who, at best, showed poor enough judgment to let one of the two thieves repeatedly trespass?

It was clear to Ian that he had to remain silent and ride it out. As long as he didn’t trip himself up, the FBI had nothing on him—because, alas, he was innocent. That was the delicious irony: The only way they would be able to nail Ian for anything was if he told the truth about the fact that he didn’t do anything.

I asked Ian: “Did you